The White Linen Nurse eBook

“Zillah!” she demanded peremptorily.
“All the year I’ve wanted to know!
All the year every other girl in our class has wanted
to know! Where did you ever get that picture
of the Senior Surgeon? He never gave it to you
in the world! He didn’t! He didn’t!
He’s not that kind!”

Deeply into Zillah Forsyth’s pale, ascetic cheek
dawned a most amazing dimple. “Sort of
jarred you girls some, didn’t it,” she
queried, “to see me strutting round with a photo
of the Senior Surgeon?” The little cleft in
her chin showed suddenly with almost startling distinctness.
“Well, seeing it’s you,” she grinned,
“and the year’s all over, and there’s
nobody left that I can worry about it any more, I don’t
mind telling you in the least that I—­bought
it out of a photographer’s show-case! There!
Are you satisfied now?”

With easy nonchalance she picked up the picture in
question and scrutinized it shrewdly.

“Lord! What a face!” she attested.
“Nothing but granite! Hack him with a knife
and he wouldn’t bleed but just chip off into
pebbles!” With exaggerated contempt she shrugged
her supple shoulders. “Bah! How I hate
a man like that! There’s no fun in him!”
A little abruptly she turned and thrust the photograph
into Rae Malgregor’s hand. “You can
have it if you want to,” she said. “I’ll
trade it to you for that lace corset-cover of yours!”

Like water dripping through a sieve the photograph
slid through Rae Malgregor’s frightened fingers.
With nervous apology she stooped and picked it up
again and held it gingerly by one remotest corner.
Her eyes were quite wide with horror.

“Oh, of course I’d like the—­picture,
well enough,” she stammered. “But
it wouldn’t seem—­exactly respectful
to—­to trade it for a corset-cover.”

“Oh, very well,” drawled Zillah Forsyth.
“Tear it up then!”

Expeditiously with frank, non-sentimental fingers
Rae Malgregor tore the tough cardboard across, and
again across, and once again across, and threw the
conglomerate fragments into the waste-basket.
And her expression all the time was no more, no less,
than the expression of a person who would infinitely
rather execute his own pet dog or cat than risk the
possible bungling of an outsider. Then like a
small child trotting with infinite relief to its own
doll-house she trotted over to her bureau, extracted
the lace corset-cover, and came back with it in her
hand to lean across Zillah Forsyth’s shoulder
again and watch the men’s faces go slipping
off into oblivion. Once again, abruptly without
warning, she halted the process with a breathless exclamation.

“Oh, of course this waist is the only one I’ve
got with ribbons in it,” she asserted irrelevantly.
“But I’m perfectly willing to trade it
for that picture!” she pointed out with unmistakably
explicit finger-tip.

Chucklingly Zillah Forsyth withdrew the special photograph
from its half-completed wrappings.

“Oh! Him?” she said. “Oh,
that’s a chap I met on the train last summer.
He’s a brakeman or something. He’s
a—­”